Free Press

Nation's Leading Press Freedom and Civil Liberties Groups Call on FCC to Abandon Its Attack on Net Neutrality

More than 30 press freedom, civil liberties and open government groups submitted a letter to Federal Communications Commission Chairman Ajit Pai urging him to cancel the scheduled Dec. 14 vote to undermine the open-internet protections put in place in 2015. “You must not abandon Net Neutrality,” the letter to Chairman Pai reads. “The open internet is today our main conduit for expression and information. It is our library, our printing press, our delivery truck and our town square.

Don't Believe AT&T's Net Neutrality Lies

Last week, AT&T Senior Vice President Bob Quinn tried (and failed) to undercut Network Neutrality supporters by insisting that Free Press has been foretelling doom and gloom since 2010. That’s when the Federal Communications Commission adopted weak open-internet rules that didn’t cover mobile access. Quinn claims that none of Free Press’ predictions about carriers engaging in mobile blocking ever came true — but he conveniently overlooks how AT&T blocked FaceTime on its cellular networks in 2012 and 2013.

The FCC's Order Is Out, We've Read It, and Here's What You Need to Know: It Will End Net Neutrality and Break the Internet

The short version is that Federal Communications Commission Chairman Ajit Pai’s order takes the Network Neutrality rules off the books and abandons the court-approved Title II legal framework that served as the basis for the successful 2015 Open Internet Order. Here are a few of the many lowlights in the draft order and a quick explanation of why they’re wrong:

Net Neutrality Protests to Hit Verizon Stores Across the US During Busy Holiday-Shopping Season

Internet users outraged by Federal Communications Commission Chairman Ajit Pai’s plan to gut Network Neutrality are planning to protest at Verizon retail stores across the country on Thursday, Dec. 7, one week before an expected vote at the FCC. In some cities, protesters will march from Verizon stores to lawmakers’ offices. The protests will highlight the company’s role lobbying to kill rules that prevent telecom giants from charging extra fees, engaging in censorship, or controlling what internet users see and do through discriminatory throttling.

Don't Fall for AT&T's Billion-Dollar Swindle

AT&T is promising to spend an additional billion dollars in 2018 if Congress slashes its tax bill for the next 10 years or more, and the company isn’t making any promises beyond that. This extra billion in investment would cost the rest of us at least $50 billion over the next decade. That’s a literal steal for AT&T and its shareholders. Put another way: For the $50 billion this corporate tax break would cost us for AT&T alone, the government could pay to have fiber-to-the-home built to every single AT&T-covered household that doesn’t yet have it.

Ajit Pai Won't Have the Last Word on Net Neutrality

[Commentary] Congress doesn’t need to legislate on Net Neutrality. What it needs to do is rein in Federal Communications Commission Chairman Ajit Pai and the Trump FCC and get them to enforce the laws and rules already on the books. Of course, I’m not so naive to think that Pai isn’t going to go forward with a vote to take away Title II and probably erase the rules altogether as soon as December. But that won’t be the last word. Given the arbitrary and capricious way the agency has proceeded, I like our chances in court.

Pai's Big-Media Handout Won't Help Communities

Federal Communications Commission Chairman Ajit Pai claimed in a New York Times Op-Ed that his ill-conceived plans to overhaul media-ownership rules are in fact a long-overdue move to rescue the struggling newspaper industry. The chairman’s piece is rife with lies of omission that render his argument meaningless.

Free Press: Trump's CNN Threat a Potential Abuse of Power

This is a lousy deal that would raise prices and give AT&T way too much power. The Justice Department should reject it. Making AT&T sell must-have content properties like the Turner Networks and CNN, or even divest a nationwide video-distribution platform like DIRECTV, could be legitimate ways to soften the concentration harms if the deal goes through. While there are plenty of good reasons to oppose AT&T’s Time Warner takeover, punishing CNN for trying to hold this administration accountable isn’t one of them.

Net Neutrality Activists Rally Against Trump FCC's Plan to Destroy the Internet

People from across the country have already generated more than 1 million comments and signatures opposing Federal Communications Commission Chairman Ajit Pai’s destructive plan to kill network neutrality. And outside the agency’s headquarters May 18, a range of advocacy groups, members of Congress and nearly 100 activists rallied to preserve the open internet.

Among the speakers were Sens Ed Markey (D-MA) and Ron Wyden (D-OR) and Reps. Barbara Lee (D-CA) and Jared Polis (D-CO). “The debate we’re here to begin is over democracy itself. It’s over whether we have a free and open internet for all voices, all competitors,” said Sen Markey. “The Trump administration is intending to shut down Net Neutrality at the behest of a few corporate behemoths. … This is the beginning of a historic fight to save Net Neutrality.” Advocates from groups including the ACLU, the Center for Media Justice, CREDO Action, Color Of Change, Common Cause, Demand Progress, EFF, Faithful Internet, Free Press Action Fund, the National Hispanic Media Coalition, Popular Resistance and Public Knowledge all gave forceful speeches testifying to the need to preserve the internet’s level playing field. Daily Kos, Fight for the Future, The Nation and Women’s Institute for Freedom of the Press were also represented at the rally.

It’s Working: How the Internet Access and Online Video Markets Are Thriving in the Title II Era

Financial and marketplace evidence demonstrates that the FCC’s 2015 Open Internet Order is an absolute success, accomplishing its stated goal of preserving and promoting the online ecosystem’s “virtuous cycle of investment.” ISP investments accelerated following the vote (e.g., aggregate capital expenditures by publicly traded ISPs have risen by more than 5 percent during the two-year period since the FCC’s February 2015 vote; investments in core network technology at cable companies during that same time period are up by more than 48 percent). Investments in the edge, including those by online video providers and edge computing firms, are up as well (e.g., capital expenditures by firms in the U.S. data-processing sector increased 26 percent in the year following the FCC’s order while there was just 4 percent growth in the year prior). More new U.S. “over-the-top” video services launched in the two years following the vote than in the seven years prior. Furthermore, the certainty the FCC’s action created spurred the entry of numerous pay-TV full replacement providers, with vertical carriers such as AT&T now distributing (and others poised to distribute) their pay-TV services via other ISPs’ last mile networks. In sum, the 2015 Open Internet Order and accompanying legal classification decision settled the prior uncertainty about open, nondiscriminatory broadband telecom service access. What followed that decision was a historic period of U.S. investment and innovation.

Sprint/T-Mobile Merger Would Destroy Wireless Competition, Kill Jobs and Harm Low-Income Families

Sprint and T-Mobile have begun preliminary talks to work toward a merger. The deal, if approved, would join the third- and fourth-largest US wireless companies, which together would serve 132 million subscribers.

Free Press' Craig Aaron said, “While we need more competition in the mobile-internet market, it's undeniable that these moves have given people more choice and fairer prices. That never would have happened had the Federal Communications Commission approved AT&T’s T-Mobile takeover or signaled to Sprint a willingness to approve a merger like this one in 2014. The competition between Sprint and T-Mobile is particularly important for lower-income families, many of whom rely on mobile as their only home-internet connection. If Sprint and T-Mobile merge, prices will spike and the digital divide will widen. The legal standard for approving giant mergers like this is not whether Wall Street likes it. Communications mergers must enhance competition and serve the public interest. This deal would do just the opposite: It would destroy competition and harm the public in numerous irreversible ways. So unless Ajit Pai wants his tenure at the FCC to go down as the worst for consumers in the agency’s 83-year history, the chairman should speak out and show us he’s willing to do more than rubber-stamp any harmful deal that crosses his desk.”

Groups Petition FCC to Delay Reinstating Obsolete Loophole That Would Usher in a New Era of Media Consolidation

Free Press and a coalition of media-rights groups petitioned the Federal Communications Commission to stay its ruling reinstating an obsolete television-ownership rule. The rule in question, called the “UHF discount,” allows broadcasters to exceed the national ownership cap by discounting the actual population coverage of their UHF broadcast stations for purposes of calculating their stations’ reach.

The FCC under Chairman Ajit Pai voted in April to put this rule back on the books to pave the way for runaway broadcast-industry consolidation, like the Sinclair-Tribune merger that was announced earlier this week. These conglomerates hope to exploit the discount to leap over the 39 percent national audience-reach cap Congress put in place. In their petition to the agency, Common Cause, Free Press, Media Alliance, Media Mobilizing Project, the National Hispanic Media Coalition, Prometheus Radio Project and the United Church of Christ Office of Communication, Inc. explain that this is a dangerous outcome stemming from a bad agency decision. The UHF discount is a technically obsolete loophole that allows the FCC to underestimate the true reach of broadcast companies. It’s technically obsolete because while UHF stations once had weaker signals, today stations broadcasting on these channels actually have better signals thanks to the Digital TV transition that occurred a decade ago. As the groups’ filing makes clear, “Reinstatement of the UHF discount opens the door for rapid and massive consolidation despite a congressional directive that there should be a limit on the scope of national ownership.”

How Public Participation Saved Canada's Internet

[Commentary] In addition to the US, Canada was also all abuzz with Network Neutrality news last week, and for the completely opposite reason: Our communications regulator, the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC), released a landmark decision that planted a flag for Net Neutrality, bolstering the future of online innovation, competition and affordable choice and allowing residents to meaningfully participate in today’s digital society.

There are two key takeaways from this decision that should give Net Neutrality advocates and internet users in the United States some hope: First, public input was crucial to this victory.Over 55,000 people made their views known to the Commission in one way or another, and the CRTC took note. Second, persistence pays off. This fight isn’t a sprint or a marathon. It’s more like an obstacle course where you emerge exhausted and covered in mud — but know the effort was worth it. There’s always another battle to struggle through, but each one still takes you forward, even if it doesn’t seem like it at the time.

[Cynthia Khoo is a Toronto-based lawyer working on internet policy and digital rights, including acting as external counsel to OpenMedia.]

100 Days Later: Net Neutrality and Resistance

April 29 marked the end of the first 100 days of the Trump administration. Shortly after Donald Trump was elected, I wrote about how Free Press would approach this era: “This isn’t a time to tinker around the edges. There is no compromise or engagement strategy that can meet these serious threats. The only option is resistance.” We launched our 100 Days of Disruption campaign the day Trump was inaugurated. Thousands of you did something daily as part of this effort to resist Trumpism (which goes beyond the man to all those enabling him or exploiting this political moment).

ogether we’ve fought back, stood up for communities under attack, experimented with new forms of activism and built new alliances across the resistance. As we enter the next 100 days, the need to resist is no less urgent. And the attacks in Free Press’ corner of the world — at the intersection of media, technology and democracy — have only intensified. In the weeks ahead, you’ll see us resisting and refocusing on the issues and in the areas where we can make the greatest difference and our allies need us the most.

FCC Chairman's Attacks on Free Press Don't Change the Facts

While unveiling his plan to dismantle network neutrality and defang the Federal Communications Commission, Chairman Ajit Pai spent a good chunk of April 26’s speech defaming Free Press. Instead of making the case for his new policies, Chairman Pai recycled some out-of-context quotes to red-bait one of our co-founders and dismiss our decade-plus efforts to safeguard the open internet.

We’ve made no secret of our disdain for Chairman Pai’s policies and his fondness for falsehoods. And we’ve long sparred with him in the press and corrected his lies. But we’ve gotten some questions about what Chairman Pai said. So I thought I’d clear up the record.

Net Neutrality Violations: A Brief History

Note: This is an updated version of an older post. Due to the Trump Administration's recent attacks on network neutrality, we felt it was important to resurface these important examples of what happens when cable and phone companies are left to their own devices. For years a lineup of phone- and cable-industry spokespeople has called Net Neutrality “a solution in search of a problem.” The principle that protects free speech and innovation online is irrelevant, they claim, as blocking has never, ever happened. And if it did, they add, market forces would compel internet service providers to correct course and reopen their networks.

In reality, many providers both in the United States and abroad have violated the principles of net neutrality — and they plan to continue doing so in the future. This history of abuse revealed a problem that the FCC’s 2015 Net Neutrality protections solved. Those rules are now under threat from Trump’s FCC Chairman, Ajit Pai, who is determined to hand over control of the internet to massive internet service providers like AT&T, Comcast and Verizon.

Killing Net Neutrality Is a Critical Goal in Trump's Campaign Against Free Speech

[Commentary] President Donald Trump’s playbook to curb free speech and silence dissenting voices goes far beyond his Twitter rants and his verbal attacks on the press. The president’s appointed chairman of the Federal Communications Commission, Ajit Pai, unveiled his plan to kill network neutrality at a closed-door FreedomWorks-sponsored event.

It’s appropriate that Chairman Pai made this announcement at a gathering sponsored by a telecom-funded organization that played a key role in elevating the racist Tea Party movement. His plan will allow powerful corporations to silence the voices of everyday people — especially people of color — who struggle to be heard. But these are surroundings Chairman Pai is comfortable in. He’s a former Verizon lawyer and a former Senate staffer for Attorney General Jeff Sessions, a hero to White nationalists. And now Pai will carry out Trump’s agenda to silence dissenting voices.